AM
12:00 At official residence (no visitors)
08:00 At official residence (no morning visitor)
09:01 Depart from official residence
09:02 Arrive at office
09:38 Meet with Minister in charge of Support for Women’s Empowerment and Child Rearing Mori Masako
09:59 End meeting with Ms. Mori

AM
12:00 At official residence (no visitors)
08:00 At official residence (no morning visitors)
09:31 Depart from official residence
09:32 Arrive at office
11:30 Meet with of UK-Japan 21sy Century Group’s Japanese-side President and Lower House member Shiozaki Yasuhisa and President of Japan Center for Intercultural Exchange Okawara Akio
11:57 End meeting with Mr. Shiozaki and Mr. Okawara

AM
12:00 At holiday home (no new visitors). Mr. Hagiuda stays the night
06:57 Depart from holiday home in Narusawa Village, Yamanashi Prefecture
07:01 Arrive at Fujizakura Country Club golf course, play golf with Special Advisor to President of the LDP Hagiuda Kochi and colleagues

PM02:09 Depart from private residence02:21 Arrive at hotel Grand Hyatt Tokyo in Roppongi, Tokyo. Exercise at NAGOMI Spa and Fitness05:40 Depart from hotel06:06 Arrive at private residence06:07 Interview open to all media: When asked about “the decision to register Tomioka Silk Mill as a UNESCO World Heritage Site,” Mr. Abe answers “I expect that many people will come to see Tomioka Silk Mill from all across the world.”06:08 Interview ends

Sunday, July 20, 2014

THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY: AN UNEASY COALITION AND THE THREAT OF ISIS. 7/21, 10:00-11:30am. Sponsor: Atlantic Council. Speakers: Lukman Faily, ambassador, Embassy of the Republic of Iraq to the United States; Frederic Hof, senior fellow, Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, Atlantic Council; Bilal Saab, senior fellow for Middle East Security, Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, Atlantic Council; Michael Singh, managing director, Washington Institute for Near East Policy; Matthew Spence, deputy assistant secretary, Defense for Middle East Policy, US Department of Defense; and Barry Pavel, vice president and director, Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, Atlantic Council.

THE AIR FORCE RESERVE AT A CROSSROADS. 7/21, 9:30-10:30am. Sponsor: Air Force Association's (AFA) Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Speaker: Lt. Gen. James "JJ" Jackson, chief of the Air Force Reserve.

ISIS (ISLAMIC STATE OF IRAQ AND SYRIA), IRAQ AND THE GULF STATES. 7/21, 10:00-11:30am. Sponsor: The Institute for Gulf Affairs. Speakers: Shireen Hunter, visiting professor at Georgetown University; Abbas Kadhim, senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies' Foreign Policy Institute; Kadhim Al-Waeli, Iraq military analyst; and Ali AlAhmed, director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs.

IRAN'S NUCLEAR CHESS: CALCULATING AMERICA'S MOVES. 7/21, Noon-1:15pm. Sponsor: The Woodrow Wilson Center's (WWC) Middle East Program. Speakers: Mitchell Reiss, president of Washington College; David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent at The New York Times; Robert Litwak, director of international security studies at WWC; and Haleh Esfandiari, director of the WWC Middle East Program.

OBAMA'S FOREIGN POLICY AND THE FUTURE OF THE MIDDLE EAST. 7/21, 2:00-4:30pm. Sponsor: Middle East Policy Council. Speakers: Kenneth Pollack, senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution; Paul Pillar, nonresident senior fellow at the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University; Amin Tarzi, director of Middle East studies at Marine Corps University; Charles Freeman, chair of Projects International Inc.; and Thomas Mattair, executive director of the Middle East Policy Council.

LIVING WITH CYBER INSECURITY: REDUCING THE NATIONAL SECURITY RISKS OF AMERICA'S CYBER DEPENDENCIES. 7/21, 4:00-5:30pm. Sponsor: The Center for a New American Security (CNAS). Speakers: Dan Kaufman, director of the Information Innovation Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA); Mike Walker, program manager at the DARPA Information Innovation Office; Melissa Hathaway, president of Hathaway Global Strategies LLC, former cyber coordination executive and director of the Joint Interagency Cyber Task Force and former acting senior director for cyberspace at the National Security Council; Gary McGraw, CTO of Cigital; and Ben FitzGerald, director of the Technology & National Security Program at CNAS.

Sunday, July 13, 2014

On July 3rd, Louis Zamperini died. He had faced death many times as a young man. And defied the "odds" many more. As a POW of Japan he was beaten, starved, experimented upon, and dehumanized. It was with God's grace that he survived to be 97. You can sign the guest book HERE.

The video documentary is an excellent snapshot of Zamperini's life as portrayed in the still, after four years, best-seller Unbroken.

It is hoped that the movie will inspire the many, still-existing Japanese corporations that used and abused the POWs they requested from Imperial Japan's Army Ministry to finally acknowledge how they treated POWs and to offer an apology. Zamperini, like all POW slave laborers, was tormented by Japanese corporate employees as much as by Japanese soldiers.

To date, no Japanese company has formally, officially acknowledged or offered an apology for their use and abuse of Allied POW slave labor. Two current Abe Cabinet members, ASO Taro (Finance) and HAYASHI Yoshimasa (Agriculture) have direct family ties and stock holdings in companies that used POW slave labor.

At both the Omori and Naeotsu POW slave labor camps, Zamperini was singled out for special torture by Mutsuhiro Watanabe, know as "The Bird." In explicably, he followed Zamperini to Naeotsu. Although, both Japanese guards and POWs acknowledged that Watanabe as a cruel psychopath, no superior ever tried to stop him. As Watanabe observes, he was not given any military orders on how to treat the POWs. Yet, as you see below, Zamperini found it possible to forgive him. Watanabe refused to meet with Zamperini and felt it only natural to beat and kick POWs. In the interview above, Watanabe brushes off his cruelty as simply the judgement of Westerners.

This article on the first international Ulaanbaatar Dialogue was published in The Jamestown Foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 11 Issue: 126 on July 11, 2014.

On June 17, the Mongolian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Mongolia’s Institute for Strategic Studies (ISS) organized an international seminar entitled “Ulaanbaatar Dialogue on Northeast Asia.” The brainchild of Mongolian President Tsakhia Elbegdorj, this new security dialogue mechanism was announced in 2013 at the VII Ministerial Conference of the Community of Democracies. At that time Elbegdorj proclaimed the conference goal was to assist and facilitate a peaceful solution to the confrontation on the Korean peninsula, therefore “Mongolia is willing to open up new gateways for the issues at a standstill” (infomongolia.mn, April 29, 2013). Speakers included researchers from nine nations (Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia, Japan, US, the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom) and among the more than 100 attendees were diplomats, military specialists and academics. The unusual mix of participants led the Mongols to dub the meeting a “Track 1.5” gathering.

At the outset ISS officials announced that there would be a first-ever trilateral summit in late August between Elbegdorj, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping (infomongolia.com, May 26). The Ulaanbaatar Dialogue came on the heels of a secret “Track 1.5” meeting that took place in Ulaanbaatar on May 21 between North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho and three former US officials: Robert Einhorn, former Obama administration Special Advisor for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control at the US Department of State; Joel Witt, former State Department official who is now Director of the SAIS/Johns Hopkins’ US–Korea Institute; and Robert Carlin, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst (hani.co.kr, May 22; voanews.com, May 28).

At the June 17 conference, keynote speaker Migeddorj Batchimeg, a Mongolian parliamentarian and member of the ISS policy council, emphasized Mongolia’s belief that there is no single formal mechanism for the Six Party Talks—aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear program—and the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue should been seen as just one venue: “Solutions to big problems do not have to start big.” The other keynote speaker, ISS Director Damba Ganbat, outlined how Mongolia seeks to build a regional security platform. Conference discussion was focused on the present Northeast Asia security situation, the reasons for the absence of a regional security mechanism, the role of economic and environmental factors in promoting regional cooperation and confidence as well as suggestions on how to promote trust and closer regional cooperation.

The major surprise at the conference was that more than half of the time was devoted to historical Asian disputes, including heated exchanges involving Chinese and Japanese speakers, instead of nuclear proliferation and increasing militarization of the Korean peninsula. General Huang Baifu, Vice Chairman of China Institute for International Strategic Studies, harshly criticized the Japanese for WWII atrocities and defended the policies of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). Qu Xing, President of the China Institute for International Studies, claimed that Northeast Asia had the largest amount of conventional and nuclear weapons in the world and the situation was complicated by the presence of US alliances, which made it counterproductive for China to end its protective relationship with North Korea.

One highlight of the discussion was the participation of a North Korean official, Lee Yong Phil, former researcher at the country’s Institute for Peace and Disarmament, who is presently a diplomat assigned to Ulaanbaatar. His presentation attacked the US for ‘hegemonism’ and asserted that tension and instability on the peninsula was rooted in the American attempt to create a NATO-like system in the Asian region through the US—South Korea—Japan alliance. He said that since the US was not an Asian country, it did not have the right to speak on Korean issues, but nevertheless asked for a positive signal from Washington, such as stopping military exercises in the region and normalizing relations with North Korea. Despite his pointed criticisms, Lee Yong Phil supported the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue mechanism and was eager to engage US presenters in private conversations. He also publicly announced that he would convey to his government the idea of working on small, clearly defined economic cooperation projects as a way to ease regional tensions.

On the Americans side, speeches were made by Dr. Alicia Campi, President of The Mongolia Society; Dr. Kent Calder, Director of the Reischauer Center at SAIS/Johns Hopkins; Dr. T.J. Pempel of the University of California Berkeley; and Peter Beck of the Asia Foundation in Seoul. All the Americans except for Beck were upbeat about the possibilities of small inter-regional economic projects as a first step in building infrastructure and confidence between the Northeast Asian states. The Russian delegation consisted of two well-known Mongolian specialists from the Institute of Oriental Studies in the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and two professors from Ulan Ude’s Buriat State University. Delegation head Vladimir Grayvoronskiy suggested the Mongols were moving from bilateral to trilateral strategic partnerships such as Russia–China–Mongolia and maintained that the stagnation in Russian–Mongolian relations had ended with the beginning of a “new wave” of cooperation.

Notable for their reluctance to overtly support the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue was the South Korean delegation. The representatives from the South Korean Institute for National Security Strategy (INSS) were particularly pessimistic about any Mongolian contribution to Northeast Asia’s security and warned that serious territorial disputes in the region are creating the danger of hyper-nationalism. General Ki-Duk Lee, General Director of the INSS Research Planning and Administration, noted the paradox that now there is more instability in the region, even though there is more economic integration. Calling for patience and a step-by-step approach, he suggested working on non-traditional security issues first and then creating a multilateral security consultation body. On the second day of the conference, the international presenters had a photo opportunity with President Elbegdorj and visited a Chinggis Khaan statue and museum complex in the countryside.

While the harsh tone of some of the conference rhetoric discomforted many recipients, the Mongolian side was pleased with the results and even saw the angry exchanges as a positive development. The new Mongolian activism toward the Korean peninsula was generally supported by the international researchers in attendance. Officially, the Mongolian government continued to emphasize that the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue “is not a single action, but a mechanism of trilateral or multilateral dialogue depending on the agenda” (The Mongol Messenger, June 19) and announced that the conference will be organized regularly in the future.

ENDING WARS TO BUILD PEACE. 7/14, 8:30am-12:45pm. Sponsors: United States Institute of Peace (USIP); Rand Arroyo Center; and Center for the Study of Civil-Military Operations, U.S. Military Academy. Speakers: Gideon Rose, Author, How Wars End; Lt. Gen. Robert Caslenl, Superintendent, U.S. Military Academy; Jim Jeffery, Former United States Ambassador to Iraq; James Kunder, Former Deputy Administrator, United States Agency for International Development; Army Lt. Gen. Mark Milley, Commander, U.S. Army III Corps; Rick Brennan, Senior Political Scientist, RAND; and Tara Sonenshine, Distinguished Fellow, George Washington University. Location: USIP, 2301 Constitution Ave., NW. Contact:

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Japan and the art of un-apologising is an Op Ed published first in The Canberra Times, June 29, 2014 By Dr. Tessa Morris-Suzuki, APP member and an Australian National University College of Asia and the Pacific Japanese history professor and an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow.

The Japanese government has long had difficulties coming up with effective apologies for the wartime misdeeds of the country’s military.

For decades, while many ordinary Japanese grassroots groups worked tirelessly to right the wrongs of the past, the silence from the corridors of power in Tokyo was deafening.

But then in the 1990s all that changed, and the Japanese government issued a series of statements on the events of the war. Like official apologies elsewhere, these were not perfect. Turning words into deeds proved to be a challenge. But the apologies enhanced Japan's standing in the eyes of the world; above all, they made a very big difference to many of the surviving victims.

Now the world is confronted with the spectacle of a Japanese government caught up in a contorted process of un-apologising; and a very strange and disturbing spectacle it is too.

The issue at stake is the Kono Declaration of 1993, an apology issued by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono to the so-called "comfort women", women who suffered terrible sexual and other abuse in an empire-wide network of wartime military brothels.

Sexual violence in war is not a problem unique to Japan. Many countries have ugly stains on their history. But the "comfort station" system was remarkable in its size – tens of thousands of women were recruited. And there is abundant testimony from victims and others that many of the women were recruited by force or trickery.

The 1993 Kono Declaration was a forthright apology for these events. Though it focused particularly on Korean women, it was also addressed to former "comfort women" in other countries including Australia. It admitted that they were "recruited against their own will, through coaxing, coercion, and so on" and "lived in misery at comfort stations under a coercive atmosphere". It went on to promise that Japan would "forever engrave such issues in our memories through the study and teaching of history".

The Japanese government refused to provide direct monetary compensation to former "comfort women". But, following the Kono Declaration, it did offer welfare and medical support, while "atonement money" was paid from a non-governmental fund. This response, sadly, created divisions among the survivors: some welcomed the payments; others rejected them on the grounds that the Japanese state should pay direct compensation itself.

During the late 1990s, some Japanese history texts were extended to include a very brief mention of the "comfort women" issue, but this aroused the ire of Japanese nationalists, who launched a fierce campaign for more "patriotic" history education. All mention of the issue has now disappeared from textbooks, and the promise to engrave the issue in public memory has simply not been kept.

Meanwhile, the "comfort women" issue had become a political football in both Japan and Korea, being used by nationalists on both sides to enhance their popularity. In Japan some prominent conservative politicians launched fierce attacks on the Kono Declaration, which they regarded as an insult to the memory of Japan's war dead.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has always been uncomfortable with the declaration's references to coercion. But Abe is also an eager supporter of Japan's alliance with the US; and the US government, concerned to maintain good relations between Japan and South Korea, insists that Japan stand by the declaration.

This left the government with a dilemma: how to undo the words of the Kono Declaration without officially withdrawing the declaration. Here is the solution.

Step one: create a committee to "re-examine" the process by which the apology was put together. This, not surprisingly, finds evidence that the Japanese and Korean governments negotiated about the wording of the apology before it was released. Now the apology can be presented, not as a truly Japanese document, but as a compromise worked out by a Japanese government that lacked the will to stand up to pressure from the Koreans.

Step two: cast doubt on the veracity of victims. The Japanese committee's "re-examination" of the Kono Declaration does this by stressing the fact that some of the former comfort women whose testimony was collected had "quite confused memories", and that the Japanese government did not fact-check their stories.

Step three: define the word "force" extremely narrowly, so that it applies only to situations where women were marched out of their homes at gunpoint by members of the Japanese military. This allows your committee to inform the world that, according to the studies conducted by Japan, it is, after all, "not possible to confirm that women were 'forcefully recruited'".

The result is the un-apology that you make when you are not un-apologising. Now the Japanese government can truthfully insist that it has not withdrawn the Kono Declaration; all it has done is very effectively to demolish its credibility.

Prime Minister Abe has repeatedly stated that the "comfort women" issue should be left to the scholarly judgment of historians, but the government's committee contained just one historian, Ikuhiko Hata, who had been campaigning for years to have the Kono Declaration rewritten.

Hata, who has also made an art form of combing through the testimony of former "comfort women" for any inconsistency that may cast doubt on their truthfulness, publicly predicts that the committee's report is likely to make some Japanese people "so enraged that their hair will stand on end" and "conclude that Japan was duped by Korea". "Maybe," he adds, "a new public view will emerge that the Kono Declaration should be withdrawn."

The next step, foreshadowed by the prime minister's key political confidant Koichi Hagiuda, may be official tours to countries including Australia to present them with the "facts" revealed by the new committee report.

How Prime Minister Abe handles this issue on his impending visit to Australia will be watched with great interest – and at least some discomfort.

PM12:02 Leave exhibition12:03 Depart from Lower House 1st Committee Members’ Room12:05 Arrive at office01:02 Meet with Vice-Minister of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Yamanaka Shinichi01:14 Meet with LDP Vice-President Komura Masahiko01:47 End meeting with Mr. Komura01:49 Depart from office01:58 Arrive at Keio University Hospital in Shinanomachi, Tokyo. View operating room and discuss opinions with Keio University Hospital Director Takeuchi Tsutomu and colleagues02:49 Interview open to all media: When asked about his “impressions when viewing” the operating room, Mr. Abe answered “while considering the cost of these things, any hesitance I had was stemmed by the firm thought of advanced medical treatment that people can receive”02:54 Depart from Keio University Hospital03:03 Arrive at office03:04 MOFA’s Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Saiki Akitaka and MOFA Intelligence and Analysis Service Director-General Matsutomi Shigeo enter03:27 Mr. Matsutomi leaves03:50 Mr. Saiki leaves03:52 Receive courtesy call from youth group badminton team members of 5 Asian countries, come to Japan as part of MOFA’s youth exchange program JENESYS2.004:01 Director of Cabinet Intelligence Kitamura Shigeru, Director of National Security Council (NSC) Yachi Shotaro, and Ministry of Defense’s Director of Defense Intelligence Headquarters Kinomura Kenichi enter04:17 Mr. Yachi and Mr. Kinomura leave04:34 Mr. Kitamura leaves04:35 Meet with Minister of Defense Onodera Itsunori04:59 End meeting with Mr. Onodera05:00 Meet with Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs Furusawa Mitsuhiro and Ministry of Finance’s Senior Deputy Director General of International Bureau Yamasaki Tatsuo05:04 End meeting with Mr. Furusawa and Mr. Yamasaki05:09 Industrial Competitiveness Council meeting05:56 Industrial Competitiveness Council meeting ends06:06 Attend “Discover the Treasures of Farming, Mountain and Fishing Villages” cultural exchange gathering for authorized business personnel, deliver address06:37 Wrap up affairs at cultural exchange gathering06:38 Depart from office06:42 Arrive at ANA Intercontinental Hotel Tokyo in Akasaka, Tokyo. In banquet hall Prominence, attend party held by LDP group Yurinkai [有隣会] lead by LDP Minister of Justice Tanigaki Sadakazu, deliver address06:51 Depart from hotel07:02 Arrive at Tokyo Kaikan in Marunouchi, Tokyo. Have dinner at French restaurant Prunier with Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ohta Akihiro and New Komeito’s 1st-time elected Lower House members08:57 Enter members-only Union Club inside Tokyo Kaikan. Informal talk with LDP Lower House members Kiuchi Minoru and Saito Ken, and JR Tokai Chairman Kasai Yoshiyuki09:33 Depart from Tokyo Kaikan09:49 Arrive at private residence

PM12:07 End meeting with Mr. Komura and Mr. Ishiba12:08 Lunch meeting with Chairman of Yomiuri Group, Inc. Watanabe Tsuneo01:10 Lunch meeting ends01:11 Meet with South Korean Ambassador to Japan Lee Byung-kee. MOFA’s Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau Director-General Ihara Jyunichi also attends01:30 End meeting with Mr. Lee01:54 MOFA’s Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs Saiki Akitaka, Deputy Ministers for Foreign Affairs Sugiyama Shinsuke and Nagamine Yasumasa, and MOFA Intelligence and Analysis Service Director-General Matsutomi Shigeo enter02:12 Mr. Matsutomi leaves02:33 Everyone leaves02:36 Meeting of Japanese Ambassadors to Middle East and North Africa02:57 Meeting ends02:58 Meet with Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Aso Taro, Mr. Amari, Chairman of LDP Research Commission on the Tax System Noda Takeshi. Mr. Suga also attends03:30 End meeting with Mr. Aso, Mr. Amari and Mr. Noda03:40 Interview open to all media: Mr. Abe states “I am aiming to lower the corporate tax rate to 20% over the next several years”03:43 Interview ends03:44 Meet with International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach and Japanese Olympic Committee President Takeda Tsunekazu04:15 End meeting with Mr. Bach and Mr. Takeda04:22 Meet with LDP Lower House member Kawai Katsuyuki04:38 End meeting with Mr. Kawai04:39 Meet with Mr. Saiki05:01 End meeting with Mr. Saiki05:03 Depart from office05:09 Arrive at Hotel Okura in Toranomon, Tokyo. Attend party to honor the appointment of incoming Chairman of Japan Productivity Center Mogi Yuzaburo in banquet hall Maple Room, deliver address05:28 Depart from Hotel Okura05:33 Arrive at office05:37 Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy meeting06:21 Council meeting ends06:33 Depart from office06:34 Arrive at official residence. Dinner meeting with Association of Families of Victims Kidnapped by North Korea [救う会：Sukuukai] Chairman Nishioka Tsutomu and Kyoto University emeritus professor Nakanishi Terumasa. Special Advisor to the Prime Minister Eto Seiichi also attends08:10 Depart from official residence08:20 Arrive at private residence

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APP is a Washington research center studying the U.S. policy relationship with Northeast Asia. We provide factual context and informed insight on Asian science, finance, politics, security, history, and public policy.